crc-ict

I don't know about now as I stopped drinking coffee a few years ago, but the old coffee in the cardboard cups always tasted a bit like fuel!!

I'm thinking I'm going to pick up an Orange San Francisco 2 and install a debranded custom 2.3 rom to check out 'vanilla' android so to speak. With the public sector employee discount one comes it in at just under the £100 and they are going for more than that on eBay once unlocked so seems like a good solution. Unless I get any better offers before I get to the Orange shop.

Hmm, you make a good point there. Hadn't thought about that really! It is likely to be an HTC handset I get if I go for Android, so maybe I need to look in that direction more? Thanks

Just wondering if any of you had struck lucky with a new phone from Father Christmas and were looking to get rid of an Android smartphone at all? I am due for an upgrade of my iPhone 3GS at the beginning of March and I am currently agonising over whether I can justify the expense of getting the new iPhone 4S (around £170 on top of the 24 month contract), or whether I should take the Android route and get the phone free. I am just not sure if I can live with the change away from the iPhone, so I want to get hold of an Android to use for a couple of months to see how I get on before I am committed for 2 years. I'm not looking to spend much as it would be a very temporary phone, but would happily match for example Mazuma's price for a phone that someone was planning to dispose of that way - I can then recover as much of my expense as possible either that way or through eBay once I get the upgrade phone in March. I'm looking for something that is going to be representative of what I might get, so at least Android 2.2 I think and in good working order - condition not so important. If anyone has anything they'd like to offer in this way, drop me a PM and we'll discuss. Thanks and a Happy New Year, Chris.

We normally collect this sort of stuff together and get it taken away by PRM Green Technology when we have enough qualifying items for a free collection.

I was going to suggest myHermes for sending big/heavy eBay stuffs, but I don't think they will take things as heavy as 35kg. The eBay Parcelforce deal through PayPal is excellent value for heavy items - upto 30kg for less than £15 on a 48 hour service. Has to be bought as a 'postage label' through PayPal for an eBay sale though. I fear that talking about 35kg+ you might be entering pallet territory...

How much are you offering? I have an old NES with duck hunt, a couple of Mario games and various other games that I might be willing to sell for the right price. PM me with an offer if you are interested.

Ah, I was thinking of RM Classboards - you may well be right about ActivBoards.

IIRC, weren't the old RM Classboards re-branded Hitachi's? Could be wrong though.

We got hold of some micro-atx power supplies and extensions for the various power leads and they work passably well. However, the supplies we got don't fit the case recesses perfectly due to slightly different alignment of the mains input socket and the extra connectors involved in using the extension leads make fitting all back together something of a challenge. Also, we didn't try to replace the very long lead going to the CD and FDD bays - our machines don't have either of these drives installed. So in short, it worked, but its a bit of a fudge and is quite a lot of effort - you will need to be familiar with how the RM One goes together (and comes apart!) and be prepared for some frustration!

I've been looking at parts recently for a new build for my Dad. Tail end of last week, a 500GB WD Caviar Blue was around £40. Monday this week, price has risen to £50 and was at £65 by Tuesday afternoon! Eventually got one of the last 10 Caviar Black drives that eBuyer had in stock for £55ish Crazy times!

@Heebeejeebee: My iPhone did this as well - it seems that the restore doesn't actually put all the apps back properly. I reconnected my phone to iTunes and it then came up with 'Restoring Apps' - it took ages and nothing much seemed to be happening but when it had finished everything worked properly again. Might be worth a try connecting back to iTunes and resynching.

For our sins we have a large number of RM One machines in our school - they are the V2 type not the very old ones and not the new type: They are all around 4-5 years old now out of warranty and we are having problems with dying power supplies. The PSUs are a standard micro-ATX/SFX type supply but with much longer cables than usual - generic size-compatible replacements don't have long enough leads. We have been advised by RM that replacement PSUs are no longer available and so we are looking at alternatives to keep our machines working - we can't afford to replace them all. I was wondering if anyone else had encountered this problem and if they had found a solution? At the moment I am thinking about generic PSUs and extension cables but it's not going to be pretty. Any ideas? Cheers Chris

We use laptop-lcd-screen.co.uk, who I believe are a trading division of Qual-IT Again helpful, fast and reliable.

Beware of any Renault with the 1.9DCi engine - they have a very common issue with turbo failures. Google 'renault dci turbo problems' for lots of scary reading. Having said that, I used to drive a Megane with the 1.9DCi and the 6-speed box and they are lovely to drive. 70 on the motorway at 1700ish RPM in 6th is super-smooth! And they do shift.

That's an interesting viewpoint. From what I understand, with a FWD car, the back tyres are actually more important from a safety point of view - it is much harder to keep control of the car in the event of a rear tyre failure compared with a front failure.

Have you tried setting up your O2 SMTP server with secure authentication (using your O2 username and password)? This is how I have my iPhone set up and that works fine on the O2 mobile signal, or my BT Broadband at home when I'm on wifi. Might be worth a try? I actually use my home e-mail client like this because the BT SMTP server is a pain with non-BT/Yahoo e-mail accounts and I use my own domain hosting for e-mail.

Hi, Does anyone have any recommendations for AV installers who are known to do a good job that work in the West Sussex area? We will be looking at getting some projectors and whiteboards moved around this summer and are looking for contractors to quote for this work. Cheers Chris

Am I the only person in the world who will be doing everything I can to avoid as much of the Olympics as possible?

Hi guys We are looking at getting a number of new classroom machines to install over the summer for some it suites. I've been looking at the Lenovo A series all in ones and wondered if any of you had an experience with these - what are they like, are they a good classroom choice etc. Any feedback would be great Cheers Chris

Just had a similar problem with some XP machines when imaging went a bit wrong - the USB drivers managed to become 'unsigned' so would not install without user confirmation so keyboards and mice didn't work before logon. Solution on XP was to delete the Catroot2 folder then restart - not sure if that'll apply to Win7 though.

I think the 'universal-ness' of the chargers depends on their power output - I have certainly used non-apple chargers with my iPhone/iPad, but not all work. Some universal chargers seem to be sold as 'iPod/iPhone compatible' though, but not sure what the difference is.

With some fiddling and an SD card, I got XP Pro running on Eee 2G!

What network is the HTC Smart for?

Had a very similar thing from Marks and Spencer with reference to Epsilon. Dark times...